Seven
by Black Tangled Heart
Summary: Seven creatures of the Underworld, with a deadly sin for each. Completed.
1. Harold

Seven   
  
© 2003 Black Tangled Heart   
  
Disclaimer: M. Luhrmann the brilliant owns the film.   
  
Dedication: to the lovely Bohemian Storm. She knows why.   
  
~*~   
  
One   
  
--   
  
He'd always hungered for the unattainable; once he received it, he lusted for more.   
  
As a child, he'd eaten more than his fair share, stealing a cookie here and a buttered roll there. He would finish what his younger sister refused during meals. He filled empty nights with dreams of chocolate and cream. When tears ran down his face, he swallowed food like narcotics to numb the pain.   
  
It was often dismissed by his flaxen-haired mother as a need for nourishment. It became a floodgate that caused an addiction to consumption; one that was not accompanied by blood filled lungs. It swelled like a tempest, an obsession, a sickness, which reached far beyond the oven to the heights of the starry sky, expanding quicker than his waistline and scheming smile.   
  
When the gilded doors of the Moulin Rouge were flung open to customers, he told his girls that a share of their earnings would be given directly to him. He gave no reason for this statement, and no girl dared question him. The demand was not out of the ordinary, but the reasons behind such a request were absurd. Every precious franc that rained down upon heated bodies became the means to pay an electricity bill as gluttonous as Zidler himself.   
  
Hot bulbs snaked across the crude walls like untamed ivy. The arms of the windmill filled the darkest night sky with a shower of red light. Beams of colour illuminated flushed faces. The dance floor was incandescent; the entire bordello a shimmering monstrosity, powered by the sordid transactions undertaken by the courtesans.   
  
He'd once raged at Tarot when she hadn't left a week's earnings on his cluttered desk. The soothsayer had entered the kitchen, nearly blind with tears. Anxiety rippled through the Rouge like scalding water; Zidler's usually cheerful face had blanched, and immediately coloured in fury. His booming voice that had once comforted the girls shook everyone to the bones. Tarot had never been quite the same after that night. She became almost frighteningly prompt with giving her earnings to Zidler, driven by an impenetrable fear.   
  
Satine was even made to pattern Harold's desk with handfuls of diamonds; no exceptions were made for such a thing, even when the favourite was concerned. She told Christian on their first meeting that without the payments she'd be back in the filth of Montmartre, with a chapped mouth, cold hands and an empty belly.   
  
He favoured the girls who were presented chains of gems, which he pawned without second thought. Pearly Queen had once ripped a choker right off Babydoll's throat in order to earn her keep. After Tarot's blunder, rules became tighter and those who failed to present Harold with money were disposed of onto the streets. "Money makes the world go 'round," he often said.   
  
There were times when he was lenient. Some years ago pale courtesan named Elizabeth had maimed her foot in dance, leaving a pulpy mess of blood, sinew and tears. The wound had been bandaged and the fracture healed, only to leave her with a permanent limp.   
  
All the girls loved her, and thus she stayed at the Rouge. She'd become an accomplice to Marie, darning dresses when the faded star did not rise from bed; using sure and practiced hands to cover the faces of the courtesans with powder and kohl on rushed nights.   
  
Though she rarely took a customer, she gave Harold most of what she earned. Zidler avoided confrontations about money with Elizabeth as best he could, though he often felt the need to search her room for a wad of notes she'd secretly hidden. An addiction can be temporarily quelled, but old habits die hard.   
  
In the Duke, Zidler found himself paying a price that was far greater than money. His beautiful sparrow with her clipped wings was placed in a cage when Harold's pen sealed the written contract. With each day that passed, the golden bars closed further inward, crushing her. And still she sang her broken song and dreamt of rosy dawn light and fields of flowers.   
  
She gave Zidler the gifts from the Duke: every jade ring, thick sheaves of bills, each gold-plated bracelet and jewel-encrusted hairpin. She only kept that one necklace, heavy enough to crush her fragile heart, with a beauty that matched her own.   
  
When the bordello became a desolate ruin, he wished for nothing more than a chance at the redemption he had never allowed the most precious one of them all. The lights flickered and dimmed; the bordello was empty, and so was he.   
  
-- 


	2. Marie

--  
  
Two  
  
~*~   
  
She'd always gotten her way, and it had done nothing but destroy her.   
  
As the youngest of five children, she was her mummy's princess. Nothing ever came between what she desired and obtaining it: a new ring, a book of sonnets, a velvet dress; her every whim had always been satisfied.   
  
She basked in all the attention, never lifting a finger to clean dishes or mop floors at the café her parents owned. Her brothers had long since packed up and left: inquisitive Alexander went to Greece to study history, William traveled London to publish his novel, and Christophe followed him in order to teach music. Marie and her sister Adele were left to help their parents operate the restaurant.   
  
She never listened to her mother when she was reprimanded to eat her vegetables or clean her teeth. Instead of doing what she was asked, she ran about the streets with the filthy urchins from dawn until dusk, returning home only to watch the evening's show.   
  
Adele, with her deep-set eyes and chestnut curls, sprawled nightly atop the piano and sang wretchedly melodramatic love songs. At the age of twelve, Marie was content with watching the spectacle. Sometimes she played the piano for her sister, but out of sheer indolence, she often hopped up after two or three songs and demanded that her father or mother play for Adele. She helped her sister with makeup and costumes, but always gave her mother a snappish "Non, Maman," when asked to help with the wash or ironing.   
  
When Adele got married six years later, Marie took her sister's place, earning all the more affection. She sang, but never danced, just as she had done up her sister's hair, but never wiped down oily countertops.   
  
She met Harold when he came into the restaurant with his father, a few short months before the building was incinerated in a fire. Marie's family lost every possession: their antique china and velvet drapery, as well as each-hard earned franc.   
  
In desperation, Marie had flung herself into a marriage to Harold. She'd threaded her arms about his neck and whispered promises of success, that she'd learn what she'd refused to for her whole life.   
  
She'd lain abed for weeks following the rushed ceremony, for she knew not how to take care of herself. She could tie corsets with expert hands and she had often traced her sister's eyes in black and her mouth in crimson, but she'd never so much submerged a cup in water or scrubbed a dirty floor. Harold still waited for the day when his wife would keep her promise to him.   
  
When Harold opened the Moulin Rouge and began taking in girls, Marie rose from bed only to get them ready for shows. She was an expert with solely the rouge brush and the whalebone. Tartan's cheeks became smeared in soot from cleaning the fireplaces; Antoinette's hands were blistered from the scalding water she used to wash the soiled laundry.   
  
Marie cared for Satine as though the flaming-haired young woman was her own daughter, and using her past experience as a performer, taught the girl to read music. The two women played the piano together on quiet nights, while Nini griped and groused as she scrubbed the bathtubs.   
  
After Elizabeth's foot had been crushed in the can-can, Marie's futile attempts to pull herself out of her sluggish ways diminished. Elizabeth did everything for the girls before rehearsals and shows, mending Juno's torn bloomers and plaiting Arabia's hair. Marie only rose from bed to help Satine into a resplendent dress or make tea for Harold and herself. She found solace in cigarettes and lovemaking.  
  
Upon discovering Satine's consumption, Marie became afraid. If she lost the beautiful young woman, there would be even less of a reason to wake in the morning. She was silent when Harold told Satine of her illness, listening to the starlet's rough gasp of pain and realization.   
  
With baleful eyes, she'd taken on unfamiliar punctuality on Opening Night. When Satine's breath faded from her body in the poet's arms, Marie's brittle heart cracked in half, for her own idle actions had done nothing to help anyone, not even herself. Last minute attentiveness and productivity could not have saved the nightclub, nor its starlet and supporting cast.   
  
She lay in bed that night, listening to Harold's deep, slumber-thick breathing, and wished for once to escape the duvets and pillows that had become her home since her vows had been said. She did not sleep for many nights, picking up the shattered pieces of her past mistakes, and her soul.   
  
For the first time in her life, she hadn't had her greatest wish granted.   
  
--  
  
~*~  
  
A/N: I had the most problems with that chapter. I hope it's not completely horrible. 


	3. Nini

~*~   
  
Three   
  
--   
  
She'd made herself numb to all but her dignity.   
  
She'd escaped the wrath of her mother at an early age, after seeing her parents' marriage crumble and her father befriend an absinthe bottle. Her broken-hearted sister had slit her pale wrists, leaving Nini alone. Never a dependant person, she was rapturous at her newfound freedom. She fled to the streets of the Village of Sin, where she'd walked on her hands until delighted men and women littered the dirty ground in front of her with coins.   
  
She'd known of the Moulin Rouge from a young age, and was lured to its doors by fascination. A place that freely embraced dance was one she couldn't resist. Its fiery can-can drew her like a moth, and she let herself be incinerated in the heat.   
  
She didn't search for fame or fortune, only a place to whirl with the girls in bright skirts and let her voice hit the back walls of the bordello. She'd never before been given any sort of opportunity to do what she loved. It was almost a pity that she found her passion so early, but the Moulin Rouge was the only place where she could be extraordinary.   
  
She'd been the first of Zidler's girls to accept the rule that forbade love. She'd never favoured anything resembling tenderness or compassion, and adapted all too easily to life as a whore. Her speech was brash; her beauty incarnate: the embodiment of aquamarine stones, ivory snow, crimson blood and raven's feathers. Her eyes were always alight; alabaster skin only flushed when she spun and high-kicked. Her scarlet kiss tasted of cigarettes; her obsidian hair was a twist of silk, spun up to ward off heat from her body when she took part in the dizzying nightly spectacle that always seemed to light the Moulin Rouge aflame. Singing lived in her throat and as a child she had danced down the street while the other urchins walked.   
  
She was the most independent of the girls; Babydoll and Garden Girl always asked Elizabeth to sew the intricate patterns onto their dresses. Nini opted to fix her costumes herself. On the rare occasion that her skirt hem frayed, she sewed it together without any problem. Travesty had taught her how one evening after requesting help to stitch broken-in pointe shoes. Nini could blot on the rouge and fill in her lips without even glancing in a mirror. Even after a bout of insomnia or a rough client, she emerged from her room looking flawless. She settled for nothing less.   
  
She was a realist, and her reality was brutal. She'd vanquished every last trace of modesty or regret. She wore her talent like a brand, for its fire scorched her skin and seared her mind. It kept her up during the long nights. She remained on the dance floor long after Spanish had fallen asleep in a hard-backed chair or Dominatrix had chained a man up in her tower to cover thick flesh in lacerations.   
  
The first time a customer had raised his hand and left her ivory face shades of red and blue, she'd swiped powder over the bruises and sucked hard on absinthe. She never let on that his fingernails had gouged her mouth raw and his teeth marks resided beneath her breasts. The one time a savage beating had left her in bed for eleven days, she hated her tears. It wasn't because they aggravated the cuts on her cheeks, but because she'd allowed herself to shed them. If there was one thing her mother had taught her, it was never to cry. Nini still remembered her father's anger bursting like a hot geyser, as her mother's sobs grew loud enough to wake her and her sister from their tangled dreams.   
  
Her upbringing forced her to make herself understood. While she could easily turn circles around Harlequin, she never tiptoed about the meaning of her words. The sharpness of her mind was matched by the viciousness of her tongue. While Tartan used colourful words to fill silences, a blaspheme on Nini's lips was born of defence. Wounded pride hurt far more than wounded flesh.   
  
She'd known that any problems with the Duke would bring the Moulin Rouge to ruin, but she couldn't resist telling the rat-faced investor of a love that had never been a secret to begin with. The man was not as innocuous and daft as he seemed; she only gave him a violent shove into reality, so that he fell from the glittering fantasy Satine had woven around him and hit rock bottom. No pity lingered with her after she'd sauntered away from him. Victorious laughter replaced the remorse one would have expected her to feel. She was the slap in the face, and she loved it.   
  
It wasn't as though she felt nothing. When she danced, there was electricity in her blood and passion in her eyes. Without her graceful movement, her face hardened and metaphorical spines bristled on her back; still there was life in her heart, brought forth only by a thirst to hear the staccato cracks of her shoes and the swish of her skirt.   
  
She'd known the South American tango dancer for years, but only by his face and fame beneath the spotlight, never by his name. It seemed as though he had watched her for far longer than she'd realized, and just by observing the way she spun and hearing the siren call of her voice, he knew her.   
  
There had been a time in her life when she'd given her trust to another, only to have it shattered. From then on, rather than stepping precariously around the broken pieces of a bond she had once believed to be unbreakable, she crushed the shards with vindictive words, for from the age of five after breaking her mother's favourite brooch, she'd learned that lamentations would get her nowhere. She hadn't felt remorse after she and Satine had turned their backs on one another. Survival was her priority, as it was the other woman's. Ruined friendship wouldn't even cut her skin deep.   
  
She'd made one mistake with trust, and she wouldn't do it again. Not even when she let the narcoleptic hold her close and fill her bones and flesh with fire; not when their rhythm was one unlike any she'd ever known. She lost touch with reality, and knew only his anguish and lust. He tasted her fear, traced his roughened fingertips and bruise burned knuckles across her vulnerability.   
  
Despite the agony of many and the silent apologies many made to the Sparkling Diamond on Opening Night, Nini held her head high, finding she had no tears to suppress as she heard Satine's laboured breathing and saw the blood trickle across the porcelain face. She expected to feel a red-hot flash of regret, like the one she knew had clawed its way into Harold's heart, but there was none.   
  
Even with the warmth of her lover's body beside her, and the heat she had felt from years of passionate motion, on the petal-scattered stage, she became ice.   
  
--   
  
A million thanks to Petal for her encouragement with this chapter, for Nini is Petal's baby and it made me very happy to hear that I'd successfully writ her at least a little in-character. I'm terrified of being out of character for anything, Nini in particular, so thank you goddess Petal. I love you. 


	4. The Argentinean

~*~   
  
Four   
  
--   
  
There was a darker side to everything.   
  
While the poet's heart brimmed with love, the tango dancer had been filled with a lust so raw it pained just as it satisfied, so great it consumed him. He thirsted for the pleasure that would braid itself into his veins, to run in dark and seamless lines between platelets and oxygen.   
  
When the narcotics didn't fill his mind with a haze and the resident green coquette didn't dance and sing for him, he lost himself in the essence of another, always divulging satisfaction from the shadowed depths of humanity, the wasteland of life. He never minded, for he thrived on such dirtiness, its encompassing embrace one of hot blood and shuddering sighs, of cum and half-lidded gazes.   
  
A story of broken trust and tainted passion had been a part of his existence for as long as he cared to remember. Roxanne's slit throat had always snapped back the cord of reality when the encircling arms of love threatened to pull too hard. He'd left his native country in search for solace, but he found it in his passion, no matter if he was on a rotting boat at sea or inside the wild Parisian nightclub.   
  
In the fires of Hell, he thrived; flourished. Fervour was akin to blood beneath his flesh. And Nini had been the first one to sate these insatiable, nearly maddening urges that haunted his every breath. When they melted into bronze and ivory, with syncopated heartbeats and bitten mouths, he found release that pushed boundaries.   
  
His native tongue was brought out by his desire for her. French was lost the moment her fingers carved hot rawness into his back and her strong legs slipped easily about his waist. She absorbed the sounds formed by his mouth. He had done the same with Spanish, but only when he was with her was he truly swallowed whole by fervour. They often danced to remove their clothes, and continued the same beautiful, sweat-slicked motions when flesh was bare and trembled under another's touch.   
  
The satisfaction was one greater than he'd ever known, but the hunger for the taste of her flesh and the warmth of her thighs; the stain on her cheeks and crush of her mouth always returned.   
  
It had become his release. Stress dissolved inside sighs; sadness was lost in the flame that burned in the Englishwoman's eyes. When ecstasy from the outside world made his mouth upturn, he still let a tempest of ragged breaths and bruising kisses engulf him. His singular obsession became the friction of flesh upon flesh; the heave of her chest, the way she shook beneath him.   
  
"Sunset so thickly; let's make it quiet and quickly…" Behind the red velvet curtain; in stone cold bathwater. Anywhere. Everywhere. Tonight she was pinned against the wall above his bed, pale cheeks flushed in pleasure, every particle tingling. She heard the words he rasped through her hazy vision, relishing every sensation. "I could be yours; we can unwind…" They would banish anger and hurt, tangling limbs together, sharing endless kisses that set them on fire.   
  
She'd nursed the wounds on his wrists that evening, holding him in safety as the raging waters of his sickness had tossed. She'd rocked him, fingertips tracing the contours of his face, singing the songs he'd so often whispered into her ear when passion ran high.   
  
His narcolepsy seemed to drain completely in mind and body, a vampire that fed on his joy and left him with only hollowness and fear. The creature ate his heart in great raw chunks and tried to claw out his eyes. There were times when he awoke in Nini's arms after succumbing to the rage of his illness, and upon realizing that he had not been neglected, he crushed her mouth with his in desperation to be infused with life. She always pressed her pale fingers against his jugular on such nights, to remind him of his pulse. It was unnecessary, for he knew that she was the reason his heart beat.   
  
In times before the plague struck him and for hours after, there was often no need to strip flesh clean of garments and turn the goosebumps into hot pearls of sweat. When the desire returned, they embraced it. They'd made love twice already that evening, and he knew that their third time wouldn't be their last. The kisses had begun at dusk and would continue well past dawn.   
  
Sometimes he wanted to love her. He knew her soul was black; he wished to paint it crimson, to awaken it from ice and surround it in warmth. He knew she wouldn't love him. She couldn't. She saw how Christian and Satine's love tore them apart just as it held them together. He held her when she cried and when she ached for him.   
  
Performance rehearsals caused them to suppress their longings for one another. They shared a first love of the stage. It was only after Harold had called the rehearsals to end that they disappeared to relax their stiff muscles and fine-tune their vocal chords. On the rare occasion that they lay side by side in comfortable silence rather than a heated frenzy, fears of sentiment broke the stillness and the bed sheets would seem to scorch with the friction of their bodies.   
  
Opening Night drowned him in his illness once again; the pain that always locked itself inside his bones. For the first time in the many years he had known her, she was not there to kiss away the blackness and to bring him back to the surface of the living. When his eyes opened, he rose unsteadily, afraid of plunging again into the obsidian terror, with not a soul there to break his fall.   
  
When his fingers finally clasped hers and their dry mouths locked together, they watched the Sparkling Diamond and her writer utter finals words of love. With her makeup-smeared cheek against his, he wanted more than anything to say he loved her, but he couldn't, because her mouth would never reform the words.   
  
It was then that he knew life's darkest moment.   
  
--   
  
Song used: "Mezzanine" by Massive Attack, from the album of the same name. Go buy it; I swear it's the best makeout/sex album ever created   
  
Thank you again to the beautiful and splendiferous deity Petal, and this time to Yvi as well, for helping me to make this chapter more than just one ridiculously long sex scene. I think it's pretty obvious what sin I've given to the Argentinean. I'm quite surprised at how quickly this story is materializing. I don't intend on making the chapters very long, but they do what they will. My stories are never in my complete control.   
  
Thank you so much for the reviews. They're very appreciated! 


	5. Christian

~*~ 

Five 

-- 

He'd been taught to live without sin. 

He'd clutched rosaries nightly and said prayers before drifting into dreams. He'd attended church with his family for as long as he could remember, staring hard at the crucified man depicted in stained glass and at his immaculate mother, untouched by wickedness. 

He'd obeyed his father and the church almost flawlessly, until he'd first witnessed life's greatest bliss. At the age of eleven, he'd been with his mother at their neighbours' farmhouse, and when he'd meant to find the kitchen to help serve tea, he'd found instead the family's eldest son, kissing a raven-haired young woman in a shadowy corner. They'd told him they were in love. Christian saw the sparkle in their eyes and the colour in their cheeks, and knew that their feelings extended beyond the rush that clearly accompanied kissing. From that day forward, he wanted above all to feel the same emotions: warmth in his heart and laughter on his lips. 

He loved more freely than anyone he'd ever known. He embraced the beauty of life, and his father had always scorned his talk of what was most important to him. 

_"Always this ridiculous obsession with love!"_

It was because he had never been given the freedom to love anyone that he so desperately wanted it. He had always read avidly, and when he was finished with stories about love between people and animals, he wanted to know about love between people, how it was really at the bottom of everything. 

His love of the written word translated into his talent for poetry, though he never gave up on devouring what others had crafted with their imaginations and a pen. His books had always been solacing, giving him hope that he'd someday find what he'd read about for so long. 

His writing had been an escape from the overbearing presence of his father; it gave him hope for a life beyond a strict family. His younger sisters cried when he tipped his hat to them and blew them each a kiss, promising to write letters to them, for they too dreamed of leaving the harsh household and discovering a zest for life. 

Upon arriving in Montmartre, there was the beauty he'd always craved to see, though it juxtaposed incredible poverty. He experienced the freedom he'd wished for, but saw others who lived as slaves to illness or heartbreak. He was free to write whatever he pleased and befriend anyone – at home he hadn't many friends outside of the classroom where his mother taught. 

His first kiss had come at the age of twenty-four, from a tango dancing Argentinean; the taste of the other man's mouth had been shortly lost to absinthe, but nothing could blot out the memory. The first kiss he shared with a _woman_ had been atop the elephant, surrounded by an ecstasy that he had only experienced in petty dreams. 

His first love had been discovered in a dark place, but filled her with his youthful and compassionate light. 

It was only when the dizzying rapture of the love he finally found gave way to pain that he succumbed to taboo emotion. It was inescapable. His love was something perfect; he knew the Duke detested the ideals the Bohemians lived for. It was his money that gave him an advantage. The sitar player's jealousy was mirrored in the poet's green eyes. 

Love was accompanied by a price, but the woman he adored grew to accept that he couldn't leave her with a string of pearls or a sheaf of francs. Their passion was righteous because of this; he truly did love her. They both were well aware of consequences they would someday face, but his poetry made the world melt away, and her laughter meant everything to him. 

It wasn't until jealousy stabbed his heart that he knew truth. He'd brought a jaded woman into a beautiful expanse of caresses that left not a mark on her skin, of kisses that brought out the little girl in her smile. He had healed the wounds that so many others had left after paying her for one night of feigned fervency, and still the Duke with his wads of francs was the one given first priority. 

He hated hiding their love. It was the first love they'd both ever known; they're solitary chance at happiness, and they were forced to share kisses behind curtains and when in public, act aloof. They knew it was forbidden, but desperation to find solace kept their fingers entwined and their songs sung. 

Worse than concealing their passion was waiting. Even writing didn't offer him comfort in those times, because he would write of her and envision her dancing and dining with the investor, kissing him, letting his terms of endearment fill her ears. 

On the night he tried to write whilst waiting for her, he'd found himself picking up a pen rather than sitting at his typewriter. The words had flowed like water across the creamy page. 

_If you could only see the way she loves me, then maybe you would understand; why I feel this way about our love and what I must do. If you could only see how blue her eyes can be when she says, when she says she loves me._

But she'd never said she loved him. Had she said those words to the Duke? 

_"On opening night I have to sleep with the Duke."_

She'd looked like a star that morning, with no makeup and a quiet tone. He did his best to ignore his envy, to give himself enough time to compensate, and write a song that would keep them together and overcome their pain and fear. 

When it was writ, resentment still plagued him. 

_"You promised me you wouldn't be jealous."_

He thought for good she'd abandoned the Duke when she'd flung her arms around him, face flooded with tears and voice filled with the truth, that she loved him and that the Duke knew. When she came to him dressed in black and told him of the real story's ending, jealousy struck him through the heart and shook him to the bones. 

_Well you've got your reasons and you've got your lies; and you've got your manipulations that cut me down to size. Say you love but you don't; you give your love but you won't. _

If you could only see the way she loves me…

When her breathing was shallow and he touched blood on her face, he realized that his jealousy was a waste of time, for she'd loved him through every tear and in each beautiful smile. She'd always loved him, and envy of the Duke had caused him to overlook that for every thunderstorm there had been flowers, and that he had truly saved her spirit, even if her body was plagued with sickness. They made love honestly, without an exchange of money, only trust and passion. 

If only he'd seen that his love was pure enough to save her, and the jealousy was what turned their scarlet black. When he kissed the lips that death had touched first, he knew that no amount of prayer would forgive what he had felt, what he had let guide his heart rather than his true love for her. 

He held her in his arms welcoming the tears that streamed, to cleanse him of his sin and leave him with only love. When the saline warmth ran dry, he had indeed his pure, untarnished love. One emotion was left in pain's remnants and tattooed onto his heart, one that no amount of repenting could clean away: misery. 

-- 

Thank you a million times to the goddess. She knows why. 

Song Used: "If You Could Only See" by Tonic, which I've wanted to use for quite some time now in _some_ Moulin Rouge fic. And now I've used it. Hotcha. 

Credit to Petal (as always) for she's been musing for quite some time about Christian's first kiss. It just seemed right to fit something about that in here, so inspiration is thanks to her. Mwah. 

I added a bit more to Nini's chapter, if anyone's interested in catching up on that. 


	6. The Duke

~*~  
  
Six  
  
--  
  
He'd been swallowed whole by greed.   
  
Beauty was his mother's religion. The debauched, the crazy, the sick - they were all acceptable if they were beautiful. Her son was considered a sinner, for his face was one that even the lady who bore him could not cherish. He clung to his gold rings and velvet jackets in hopes to compensate for what he didn't have. This melted any chance for him to find love: he didn't love himself, nor was he loved by others, for all he cared about was his possessions.   
  
He'd never worked a day in his life, handed everything on a silver platter. His stomach was always full; there was plenty to drink. Music played through the night. The summer heat was chased away in a large stone swimming basin on the mansion grounds; the winter cold was banished with roaring fires and thick woollen blankets.   
  
Over time, his demands made the silver become gold. He was given a servant of his own, and piles of glittering gems were heaped alongside stacks of coins and bills. His family name and business had expanded, and he reaped the benefits wholly.   
  
When he found a home of his own in the English countryside, he met a woman named Edith, who had seen the Nile in Egypt and the lush fields of Malaysia. She spoke rapturously of France and Italy while the both of them drank tea from fluted cups and ate buttered crumpets.   
  
The Duke knew that Edith didn't love him; a wedding band glistened on her finger and her husband was often a topic of conversation, for she'd seen every foreign place while accompanying him. The talk of new cities did intrigue him, for he had the means to travel anywhere he wanted. Five years later, after seeing Athens and Romania, the hopes of finding love sent him to Paris.   
  
The Village of Sin was filled with the people his mother had so often spoke of. Their speech was slurred by drink, but their eyes sparkled and their lank hair was twisted into coils. Their clothes were smeared in paint and they carried dripping brushes. Their fingers were yellowed by nicotine and callused from playing instruments. Their throats were raw from song; their breath permeated with absinthe. Their feet were rough and blackened and in their hands they clutched ballet shoes. These were the beautiful people.   
  
The Moulin Rouge was a swirling vortex that captivated him. Women seemed to occupy every space. They whirled through the garden and swarmed the dance floor. Song replaced their speech. Each of them was bright-eyed, full-lipped and limber. Surely one of them would glide into his lap, drape her arms around his neck and offer to show him a wonderful time. He tried to push away thoughts of his shirt buttons patterning the floor and his mouth stained with a young woman's ruby lipstick, but it was no use. He succumbed to the splendour and the sexuality. He'd be satisfied here.   
  
He struck a deal with Harold Zidler that left the Underworld's fate balanced precariously in his hands, and the actions of the woman that rightfully belonged to him once Harold's pen touched parchment. He had no way of knowing how trapped she felt, for she was forever beneath a façade. He wooed her with fine drink she'd so often sipped, though he never quenched her insatiable thirst for freedom.   
  
He'd made it perfectly clear to Harold that he didn't think himself a jealous man. His actions proved otherwise, and in slaking the poet's chances at being with the Sparkling Diamond, he found his greatest pleasure. He covered her throat in kisses and her sanguine hair with gems.   
  
Harold's brilliant lies had averted the disaster of shutting down the Rouge; they fed the disaster that was the investor's belief that Satine truly loved him, and was his until the end of time.   
  
The greed extended beyond a hunger to feel the warmth of her flesh. His mother had never held him when tears dripped down his face, or when his mouth was upturned in a smile. Satine nearly sated his need for physical attention, but not entirely. Opening Night was to seal everything, to prove that she was truly his property, like the necklace he clasped around her throat, or the furniture he purchased for her new dressing room.   
  
The whore with garish makeup and a Cockney accent had sent a venomous spear of truth through his psyche, and completely shattered the fantasy Satine had woven around him. She was gorgeous on the dance floor, but cruelty ran parallel to her beauty. She had a look of sheer victory in her eyes following revealing the love affair that, to everyone else, was no secret.   
  
In the Gothic Tower, he heard her song for the writer, even when she wore the heavy diamond necklace. When he broke the jewels, he left her bare and without hope. In his eyes, and upon the contract, she was rightfully his. Her song had further proved what Nini had told him. The one woman he thought to have loved him was an actress, like he'd so desired to make her become.  
  
So intense was his thirst for power that he barely contained himself from strangling the young poet with his bare hands. He had peeled a dress from Satine's skin once and had suffered greatly for it. He vowed he would not fail again, for she had deceived him. She was beautiful, though not as flawless as he had first assumed.  
  
She had not fulfilled what he had paid for.   
  
Her price to pay was the loss of her poet.   
  
Or so he intended.   
  
As the curtain fell on Opening Night, He saw the love that the young couple had embraced and shared throughout his stay at the Rouge. While their love song still echoed throughout the entirety of the place, Warner's gun escaped the theatre through a broken windowpane. As he recovered from a blow Zidler had delivered to his face, he was comforted by one thought: he was in possession of the deeds to the Moulin Rouge, which allowed him to close it down once Satine had breathed her last raw, red breath.   
  
Regret was not in his heart when he left Spectacular Spectacular, though Satine haunted his dreams for years following Opening Night. He came to realize that the writer had given her real love. It was impossible for the Duke to know the real truth of such a thing, for it was the one thing that he would never be able to purchase.   
  
-- 


	7. Warner

~*~   
  
Seven   
  
--  
  
He had failed.   
  
Growing up, he'd played second fiddle to his elder brother. His mother was a maid in the Monroth manor, like her mother before her. It was because Philippe was literate that he received high praise. Warner had always struggled with the books his mother insisted he read. He was made to do chores and clean as his mother did, while Philippe was allowed to pursue higher education in Paris.   
  
He grew up believing he was not meant for anything but polishing silverware and dusting grimy shelves. Wrath began to toughen his heart, like work had callused his hands. After six years of scouring claw-footed tubs and scraping supper dishes, he was given the task of attending to their heir of the fifth Duke of Monroth. Some years later, the ratty, revolting man was no longer an heir, but the rightful owner of everything to his family name. For the first time, Warner felt a sense of accomplishment, despite all that his mother and brother had inflicted upon him.   
  
His tasks were nearly menial in comparison to his previous ones. He accompanied the Duke on outings and took care of merchandise on trips to expensive shops. His wide form and hard face served to properly and completely intimidate others. He provided the Duke with the protection the man would have not acquired on his own, for those who did not know his jealous side saw that he bumbled considerably, and was rather unpleasant company.   
  
The first time Warner had been given permission to hold and experiment with a gun, he'd felt an enormous sensation of power rush through him. There wasn't a trace of responsibility intermingled with the feeling, only a raw urgency to have that sort of control at all times. He knew that the weapon could destroy a life. And destroy it did, bullets stealing the breath of the Duke's manic cousin, the next in a long line of heirs, and one to rule all of Monroth, should the Duke have met an untimely death.   
  
That he could not use the weapon on a more regular basis made him angry. The Duke had always had his every wish indulged. The power that came with the weapon was the one thing Warner desired, and without it, there was a scowl on his lips and unbridled rage coursing through his veins.   
  
Warner traveled with the Duke to different countries, though there stay in such places was always brief. The Duke had never been an indecisive person; he was always firmly set on each of his desires. It shocked Warner greatly to learn that he would be traveling to Paris, where his brother had sought further schooling. He knew of the Moulin Rouge and could not help pausing to wonder if his brother had turned away from his books in favour of being ravished by a courtesan, for he surely must have had the money to do so, after so many years of study and work.   
  
The Moulin Rouge overwhelmed him. Never before had he seen such decadence, even after spending so much time in the opulent manor. He wasn't given time to think of what lay beneath the glittering costumes of the dancers, or behind the closed doors in their lavish rooms. Importance was bestowed upon him once again after the contract was signed; he would carry out the punishment for failing to comply with the Duke's demand.   
  
As the theatre was constructed and rehearsals began, he stayed behind rather than accompanying the Duke on many excursions with Satine. He seemed to serve as a reminder to the cast and crew that straying from the Duke's rules would cause them to be cast onto the dirty streets.   
  
He lurked in the shadows whilst the lovers kissed and giggled together; it made him long to reach for the gun he'd been entrusted with, but he held back. To ruin the Duke's relationship with the Sparkling Diamond would be signing his own death sentence. As much as temptation tugged at his ready hand, he resisted the urge to shoot Christian and watch him crumple to the floor, blood pooling around a wound in his chest.   
  
When the Gothic Tower was alight with candles and dancing waiters, he thought for certain that the romance between the poet and courtesan had been a flash in the pan, a silly infatuation. It was only when Nini and the Argentinean's raw tango commenced in the Moulin Rouge and Satine sang the lovers' duet to Christian at the Gothic Tower that he knew otherwise. The Duke's promise of killing Christian unless the show ended his way brought indescribable joy to Warner's heart. The young couple would pay for their dastardly crime.   
  
He had always carried out whatever order was given to him. Perhaps it was compensation for his lacking in other skills; failure was a threat he feared above all other, and when it did occur, anger replaced the presumed sadness that so many people have often felt in such a time. That anger spurred determination. He would rise above his past mistakes and flaws. He would not leave the Rouge with the poet alive.   
  
Opening Night reaffirmed what his mother and brother had told him all his life, that he was good for nothing.   
  
He'd watched the lovers reunite and claim their victory. He'd held the jangling tambourine and attempted to dance, waving his way through the performers. A sickly satisfied smile had been on his lips the whole time, as he anticipated the resounding shot that would tear apart the poet and the courtesan. There had been so many opportunities to fire the gun, and yet he hadn't succeeded.   
  
The whore with ivory skin and obsidian hair had kicked away his weapon; the bespectacled pyrotechnic with the frazzled grey moustache had knocked him with the sitar and the imp of a courtesan known as Princesse had dropped a heavy sandbag on his head. The gun had subsequently broken the pane of glass in the ceiling and bounced off the Eiffel tower. He'd been left with nothing but rose petals on his bald head and blinding fury. The Duke didn't pay him for months following Opening Night.   
  
Prior to the opening of Spectacular Spectacular, he'd never been unsuccessful. While he'd brought disgrace to his family, he'd always managed to fulfill the wishes of the Duke, regardless of whether or not skulls were fractured or blood spattered heavy drapery and polished floors. The Duke had employed other servants, but like Satine was particularly precious to Harold, the Duke relied on Warner.   
  
When he drank absinthe after the curtain had fallen, the fairy cavorted above him, laughing derisively. She knew he had failed, and she teased him on it, for she was merely a fantasy and couldn't be harmed by the precious weapon he'd lost. When she laughed, eyes gleaming sardonically, he wished for the gun again, but only to use on himself.   
  
--  
  
The end.   
  
Author's Note: The reason this chapter was late is because it was the last. I think somehow the story knew it was ending and didn't want to end, so it decided to give me a lot of trouble. I'm glad that it has finally surrendered and allowed me to write it.   
  
Thank you for the reviews and support. It truly means world to me.  
  
I know there is an order for the seven sins, but I decided to write each chapter in relation to the time in which each character came to the Underworld.   
  
And just in case anyone was wondering…  
  
Harold is gluttony.   
  
Marie is sloth.   
  
Nini is pride.   
  
The Narcoleptic Argentinean is lust (and I had such fun writing his).   
  
Christian is envy.   
  
The Duke is greed.   
  
Warner is anger.   
  
~*~ 


End file.
